KEENAN VS. KEENAN (DIVORCE PROPERTY & ALIMONY)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

Appeal by the plaintiff former wife from an order sustaining a demurrer, on jurisdictional grounds, to her White Pine County action for partition and accounting of property held by the defendant, brought under Rev. Laws 1912, sec. 2166 (on dissolution 'the community property must be equally divided between the parties, and the court granting the decree must make such order for the division'). Plaintiff had obtained an Ada County, Idaho default divorce (decree August 31, 1914) with personal service made on the defendant in Nevada; defendant never appeared in Idaho and had no Idaho property. McCarran, C.J., held: (1) without deciding the Idaho court's jurisdiction to dissolve the status, that court acquired no jurisdiction in personam over the defendant nor over Nevada property, so no binding decree in personam could rest on it (Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714; Haddock v. Haddock); (2) sec. 2166 by its terms commits community property division to 'the court granting the decree,' and where a foreign tribunal granted the divorce there was no dissolution 'by decree of a court of competent jurisdiction' as to the community property, following Barrett v. Failing, 111 U.S. 523 (construing a similar Oregon statute), and quoting with approval Bedal v. Sake, 10 Idaho 270 (wife who elects a foreign forum on constructive service may not later maintain an independent action for the community property at the marital domicile); (3) no prejudice arose from dismissal without leave to amend where no application to amend was made and the complaint rested wholly on the Idaho record. Order affirmed.

In plain language

The Keenans married in Los Angeles on January 6, 1902. In 1914 the wife sued for divorce in Ada County, Idaho, even though her husband lived and ran a business in East Ely, White Pine County, Nevada, where he owned real and personal property; he was served personally in Nevada, never appeared in Idaho, and was defaulted. The Idaho court granted her a divorce on August 31, 1914. She then sued in White Pine County, Nevada, asking the court to partition the property and make the husband account for it, relying on Nevada's statute requiring community property to be divided when a marriage is dissolved. The Nevada trial court sustained a demurrer for lack of jurisdiction, and she appealed. The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed. The Idaho court may have had power to dissolve the marriage, but it never acquired jurisdiction over the husband personally or over property located in Nevada, so its decree could not support any personal or property relief here. And Nevada's community property statute commits the division of community property to 'the court granting the decree' of divorce - here a foreign court - so the statute gave the Nevada court nothing to enforce. The court pointedly noted that the wife chose a foreign forum knowing the husband and all the property were in Nevada.